


Bones

by protect_the_fishboy



Category: Teeth - Hannah Moskowitz
Genre: (not rudy or teeth), Ableism, Amputation, Amputee Teeth, Domestic Violence, Hate Crimes, Homophobia, Homophobic Language, I'll update any major things I swear, M/M, Past Child Abuse, Self-Harm, Terminal Illnesses, cystic fibrosis, i can't think of any more tags, probably no smut, sorry I'm a baby
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-01-16
Updated: 2016-08-12
Packaged: 2018-03-07 18:45:58
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 3
Words: 19,560
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3179165
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/protect_the_fishboy/pseuds/protect_the_fishboy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This is...something. Something with arms and tendrils and too many breaking waves for Rudy to be comfortable with. But he is, isn't he? He was kind of born for this, to be this cosmic lifeguard or whatever the shit. </p><p>An AU in which Teeth wears lots of sweaters, Rudy is a little obsessed with his brother and is okay with it, Diana isn't all that evil, and they're all a little older. Everyone is human, but only just.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

 

 

RUDY LETS THE SCREEN DOOR SLAM BEHIND HIM when he comes in, water pooling on the hardwood under his shoes. Diana looks up and gives a little cluck of protest, her red hair falling into her face. “I just mopped!”

“No you didn’t.” Rudy shakes out his hair, spraying little droplets of water everywhere. He hates the way the screen door creaks. It reminds him too much of screams, and he always feels like it’s telling him to run. He doesn’t like this house that he and Diana live in, with its weathered shutters and old stories and eternal stigma. They have an air conditioner, but the air it pumps is always stale and wet, and anyway it’s freezing here like seventy fucking percent of the time. Most people step out of their jackets when they come inside, but Rudy slips into his, and coming in from the rain doesn’t feel any dryer. Sometimes he’ll take long drives just for the heat and the freedom. Coming home always feels suspiciously like something else. Don’t ask Rudy what. He’s not a poet.

“I might have. You wouldn’t know.” She goes back to her book, smiling a little, and Rudy thinks that she’s very pretty in a quiet and unassuming way. Her creamy skin and cinnamon freckles do their damnedest to headline for the stars of the show, her eyes that peer from behind (fake) glasses. Rudy would be more inclined to tell Diana these things if she didn’t expect them. He thinks that in another life, he would feel really lucky to be living with a girl like her. She’s beautiful, not to mention smart. This makes her acceptable. Subsequently, she never leaves the house, cloaking herself in this tame brand of mystery. This makes her desirable. They’re roommates. Catch them on a good day and Rudy might even call them friends. But Rudy doesn’t love her.

“How’s Dylan?” The question comes while Rudy’s tilting the milk carton to his lips, something that Diana hates, and he lowers it guiltily.

"He’s…I dunno, Dylan. How is he ever?”

Rudy’s brother, a bundle of television shows and unadulterated affection wrapped around the world’s shittiest lungs. Rudy remembers the time before anyone knew he was sick, when he’d kiss this little thing on the forehead and taste salt on his lips. Dylan, king of daytime television and saltier-than-average sweat. Welcome to cystic fibrosis. He’s nine now, and it’s really beautiful and inspiring and everything, but all Rudy can think when he looks at him is that according to all the doctor’s appointments and hushed whispers and medical textbooks, his little brother’s already lived half of his life, and he’s not even a real fucking person yet. He’s _nine_.

Suddenly feeling sick, Rudy puts the carton of milk back in the fridge and cringes and the sound it makes. He hears his little brother in everything. The swoosh of pushing back a shower curtain and the sputtering of his car engine on a cold day. Fitted sheets and static-y phones. Anything is a cough if you’re desperate enough, and Rudy’s loathe to admit it, but some days (most days) he thinks his little brother is the most beautiful thing in the goddamn world, this stack of twigs beating Rudy at Mario Kart and giving Rudy a run for his money in races when that shit shouldn’t even be possible and grinning and brushing it off when his lungs are trying to kill him and shrugging through shattered wrists but crying through the stomach flu and faking sick to get out of a field trip but going to school with fucking pneumonia so he won’t miss his math test, and yeah, no homo or whatever the fuck, but Dylan still fits in his lap and crams his too-salty forehead under Rudy’s chin and wants to fucking cuddle during Star Trek marathons, and Rudy lets him, alright? They’ve never been stoic. They don’t have time to be.

Diana’s talking again, and Rudy’s kind of listening, really he is, but lately he gets this way: buzzing in his ears, copper on his tongue. He hasn’t been sleeping well, because every wayward Tweet and spontaneous text asking about booze leaves him in a cold sweat wondering if this is the one—Rudy, call me now. Your brother’s in trouble. His ears ring and his heart clenches until he reads bro, you got any more of that whiskey? and flops onto his pillow feeling like he’s done an entire night at Dyl’s bedside like when they were little, _c’mon buddy just breathe for me we’re almost there it’s gonna be okay_. He needs to ask Diana how to disable fucking Twitter notifications. He doesn’t need this.

“…Dyl. Dill. Can I call your brother Pickles? I feel like that would be funny.”

“You mean on all the numerous occasions you encounter my brother during your many travels outside of this house? Go for it.”

“You’re an asshole, you know?”

“I’m, like, the opposite of that.”

"A mouth hole? Okay, buddy.”

Rudy rolls his eyes a little. The thing is Diana is kind of his only friend, and he’s not sure how he feels about that. He’s learned the right tampons to buy because she doesn’t like drug store clerks and how to braid hair with one hand because he’ll be pouring cereal or washing dishes or frying some damn eggs but _this braid is really fucking important, Rudy, it’s just really important_ and like, what the fuck, Diana, you never leave the house, how important can it be. Rudy isn’t really sure how he feels about this life most of the time. He always wanted to go to art school. The Savannah College of Art and Design was the dream. Those kids on the website smiling and balls deep in pottery? That was going to be him, making all the vases and snapping all the photographs and sketching all the nudes, guys, all the goddamn nudes, because drawing was only ever justifiable if the end result was a naked girl. He always knew, though. There was never any hope for that if a hefty scholarship wasn’t involved, and like, he’s not _that_ good. His brother needs medical equipment and medicine and hospital stays. Rudy doesn’t mind. Rudy loves his brother. Rudy’s pre-med. Rudy’s going to do something better than this, the hospital stays and the medicines that don’t help and the nights that leave Dyl heaving up his lungs like someone a million times his age even though he looks fucking seven.

(Rudy just wishes sometimes when the chill sets into his bones that he was somewhere else.)

(Somewhere sunny and famous for its peaches, to be exact.)

(Cut him some slack. He’s only human.)

(He’s trying.)

And here’s the thing. Some nights, Rudy thinks Savannah would be better. He’s shivering in his bed and the wind sounds a little bit like screaming and he just wishes for somewhere warmer, for classes that would leave him satisfied, a creator, rather than ones that leave him scrambling to take notes and acutely aware of all the things that can go wrong with your body. It’s the respiratory system that always gets him. It’s the fact that he’s touched a cow lung with a gloved hand and been able to label all the parts of it, to know that the next time his brother’s choking on air Rudy will just be thinking of the cold gray things in his chest. Rudy thinks it’s a cruel joke. If you’re going to die at age twenty, maybe it would be better to not have lungs at all. Maybe it would be better to have not been born at all.

Thoughts like those are when the dreams come, thick in Rudy’s throat. The screams stop after a couple of minutes, but the shaking doesn’t stop for hours. And Diana comes in. She doesn’t say anything, just kind of sits on his bed, all quiet, and sometimes Rudy braids her hair. She talks about books she’s reading and complains about how inconvenient agoraphobia is, jokes about how she’s going to turn to online shopping or excessive pet ownership one of these days. She smells like chocolate and sandalwood and dust, and Rudy finds himself wondering if she tastes the same. Tonight, she quietly fiddles with his phone. She ends up just deleting the Twitter app, saying something about how if he can’t pay attention to her for long enough to hold a decent conversation, there’s no one in the world he needs to hear from every thirty seconds, and what the shit, Rudy, why do you even have a Twitter, the only person you hang out with is me, and it’s just so profoundly Diana and it’s exactly what Rudy needs.

Maybe he doesn’t love her, and maybe the sky is green and the ocean is purple and his brother shouldn’t have been born at all. And maybe Savannah would be better.

_____________________

   THE THING IS, THERE’S THIS KID WHO SITS IN FRONT OF RUDY IN ART HISTORY, and he wears really terrible sweaters. Even though this is a class Rudy enjoys, he finds himself making up stories when he’s supposed to be classifying art into eras or taking notes or whatever the hell--sweater guy, a lone wolf on a mission to wear a different sweater every day of his life, all mildly offensive in their tackiness--but then he wears a pastel pink one with stripes of silver fish for two consecutive Thursdays, so plot twist, sweater guy has a fucking washing machine. Rudy couldn’t even tell you what he finds so fascinating, except for maybe the fact that he just showed up one day, and this isn’t high school. There were no introductions, _class I’d like you to meet so and so_ , he’s just not there one day and the next he is, all skinny limbs and messy hair so blonde it’s almost white. Maybe he’s new to the school. Maybe he switched into the class, or maybe he was going to the wrong class for the first few weeks _, what do you mean this is human development, I’m supposed to be in art history!_ Rudy doesn’t know. Rudy doesn’t give a shit. Except maybe he does, because when sweater guy misses a day, Rudy notices. When he comes in with bruises on his neck and a swollen black eye, Rudy definitely notices. Some strange, primal instinct has him worrying, but as per fucking usual the kid rockets off as soon as they’re dismissed, scooping up his worn and patched backpack and limping out the door in less than a minute. A few times, Rudy tries to follow him, gets his crap together minutes before the professor usually releases them, but it’s like the second sweater guy gets out the door he’s gone, elusive as some deep sea creature. Someone with a limp that severe shouldn’t be able to get around that damn quickly. He’s like some kind of ghost.

You know, it’s the damnedest thing that makes Rudy want to talk to this kid, or things, Rudy guesses. If the facts that the kid’s actually so passionate about this class--raising his hand in the middle of lectures to say _did you know there’s a hidden message in this painting? The artist leaves his initials in obscure places_ ——and sometimes sighing as though bored with the material and pulling a newspaper out of his bag weren’t enough, one day when the kid raised his hand, overly baggy sweater (black with a pixelated green sea monster snaking across the front) slipping down his tiny wrist, Rudy’s eye was drawn to a blue wristband, or rather the logo on it. Sigur Ros--obscure icelandic post-rock that Rudy thought he was alone in loving. Color him curious. Maybe prolonged exposure to Diana and Diana alone has made him soft. And desperate.  
   It’s raining the day that Rudy is tardy for the first time of the semester, and he comes into class dripping wet, shivering from the cold. His phone keeps buzzing in his pocket but he hasn’t had time to check it. He’s just so cold all the time. He thinks of blanket forts with Dylan and shuts that line of thinking down rather quickly, something writhing in his gut. It aches, is the thing.

   Cheesily, he finds himself locking eyes with Sweater Guy, and he freezes a little (ha) when he sees that his usual seat is taken, leaving an open one next to, because fuck it, why the fuck not, him, knobby knees and what appears to be two sweaters, a lumpy white one with a pastel rendition of the sideways Jesus fish on it layered over a thinner grey one. He’s not paying Rudy any attention, tongue poking between his teeth as he scrawls intently in his notebook, and Rudy’s been standing here for far too long already, so screw it. Cheeks flaming, he begins the slow trudge up the stairs to the open seat, trembling. The air conditioner must be on or something. His teeth chatter.  
Sweater Guy nods at him, which is pretty much the extent of their communication at this point--terse nods and the occasional _hey, I dropped my pencil_ \--before something in his face changes and he’s wracked by coughs, gross and wet, tucking his face into the crook of his elbow. Rudy thinks of his brother. The kid’s hair sticks up in all directions, and Christ he looks rough, his black eye slowly healing, a deep purple shadow that Rudy knows well--sleeplessness-- under his good eye, both rimmed in red. He’s that strange combination of pale and flushed. Sick kid, Rudy thinks. Big brother fix-it impulse, or something. He just wants to take the kid by the shoulders and cram some Tylenol down his gullet. The kid, on the other hand, grins, reassuring, and Rudy’s kind of taken aback--his teeth are small and fairly sharp, crooked in places. Somehow it works for him, as lopsided as everything else about him. Rudy finds himself thinking that it’s still the most genuine thing he’s ever seen, and it kind of punches him a little.

    The professor is droning on about postmodernism, and yeah, Rudy actually does care about this shit, shut up, so he takes out his notebook, but he can’t fucking focus. His hand shakes when he tries to start his outline notes, and puffs of air from the vent keep kicking the shit out of him. He rubs his hands briskly up and down his arms. The kid beside him, the kid on the other side of the country, the chill. Rudy honestly hasn’t heard a damn thing the professor’s said. And then there’s a hand touching his wrist, colder than his own skin. A sharp whisper. “Here, take this.”

     Rudy looks over and sees that the kid’s taken his Jesus fish sweater off, leaving the grey one underneath, and is just kind of shrugging at Rudy. Rudy’s face creases a little in confusion.

     “Are you deaf? Take it. I can’t focus with you shaking everywhere.”

     Rudy doesn’t know if it’s shock at being spoken to by someone who isn’t just asking for booze or a one-handed braid, but he just kind of opens and shuts his mouth.

    “Oh, god, you aren’t actually deaf, are you?” The kid appears to say something in sign language, and at Rudy’s blank expression: “No, you’re not. I just called you a douchecanoe. I felt like you should know.”

      What. 

     “I don’t--?”

     “Take the sweater, Jesus. I hope you’re not this slow when you’re not dying of hypothermia.”

Rudy takes the sweater. Looks around a little. No one appears to give a shit. Pulls it on. It’s very warm.

     “Th...thanks. Wait, you’re sick.”

      “If you catch it, I’ll come weep at your bedside.”

      “No, I mean--” Rudy’s not usually this lame. He blames the chill. “Like, are you okay? Your face…”

      The kid smirks a little, like he’s proud of it. “I’ve had worse.” Like that makes it better. “They call me Teeth, by the way.” He doesn’t offer a hand to shake or anything, just toys with the fraying edge of the sleeves of his sweater, pulling them up so they cover his knuckles. It’s weird seeing him dressed in something so tame. “I mean, I’m sure they would, if people talked to me.”

     “What the shit kind of nickname is that?”

      “Don’t you listen? It’s the kind you give yourself. You’re Rudy, right?”

      Rudy’s about to answer, maybe restore his street cred with something funny, but his phone buzzes again, this time a text, and he should probably be checking this shit, see whatever random craving Diana has tonight. He just hopes it isn’t Chinese again.

      The blood drains out of Rudy’s face.

      On the bright side, it’s not Chinese, but he’d rather eat a fuckton of eggrolls than--actually, the thought of food turns his stomach, and his breath kind of snags in his throat.

    **Call me ASAP. Dylan sick. At hospital now**

     It’s from his mother. The scraping of Rudy’s chair sounds like a cough. The wheeze of air from the vents tastes like his brother’s laugh. Pillow forts and video games. Puzzles. He has to get out. He’s gotta do something. For a second all he can think about is flowers and marble slabs.

    He bolts down the stairs in Teeth’s fucking sweater, leaving the pieces of whatever question Teeth is asking broken behind him. He doesn’t grab his bag. He doesn’t grab shit. The only things he has are his phone and his keys and _Dylan Dylan Dylan_.

    It’s the opposite of what he should be thinking about right now, but he gets a vindictive sort of pleasure from being the one to leave Teeth asking questions.

*******

   SO BASICALLY DYL IS THE BIGGEST FUCKING DRAMA QUEEN on the face of the earth, fainting at school like his lungs aren’t _always_ trying to kill him, and this time’s different because his face was changing colors or whatever the shit. He was intubated for a while, and they drained, like, a gallon of crap from his lungs, so what the shit ever, Dylan. Rudy talks to him.  
    “Hey, buddy. How you doing?”

     His voice is rough. “I had a tube down my throat. It didn’t really help.”

     “It happens.” Rudy’s sitting in his car and just shaking. He just can’t get warm. Teeth’s sweater is loose on him, but not that loose. It doesn’t swallow him like it does Teeth. He folds the sleeves over his fingers.

     “They have this crap in a jar. Crap from my lungs. It’s all very exciting.” He punctuates it with a yawn.

     “I wish I was there.” Rudy says this bit quietly, because he never knows when something he says will freak his brother out. There’s a beat of silence, so he follows it up with “so I could beat the shit out of you as penance for the shit you scared out of me.”

“Sorry.” Dylan’s a little quieter than usual, like he sometimes is after serious scares. They both just kind of go silent for a second. Rudy does the breathing for both of them.  
“It’s just--” His voice sort of buckles, and that’s when Rudy knows he’s feeling worse than he’s letting on. “I’m going to die, Red.”

     Red. As in Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer. Rudy was 17 and Dylan was 6 and a Christmas-special obsessed six-year-old does not forget the revelation that his brother’s full name is “Rudolph” (Mom: _it’s a family name_ , dear; Rudy: _it’s a death sentence_ ; Dylan: _I can’t believe you named my brother after a reindeer!_ ), and something cold pools in Rudy’s stomach, and it’s like all the air’s just been punched out of him. Rudy wonders if this is what Dyl feels like all the time.

     “What the fuck are you talking about?”

      He laughs a little. He’s fucking _nine_. “Maybe not now. But, y’know, sometime. I don’t...have long.”

      “You’re on the transplant list.” Rudy clenches and unclenches his fist. “Closer to the top than you’ve been in years. Just....”

     “ _Positive reinforcement. Depression and anxiety are prevalent in adolescents with CF. Encourage your child whenever possible_. I’ve read mom’s pamphlets, you know?” He sounds so damn resigned about it, like he’s 90 rather than yeah has Rudy mentioned he’s fucking _nine_? “I’m not depressed. I’m just...tired, I guess?” He says it like he’s apologizing and just, just, Dylan, okay? Rudy feels sick.

     “Hey, don’t talk like that. You die on me, I’ll kill you.” He huffs out a laugh.

      There’s some shuffling in the background, some murmuring that Rudy recognizes as his mother, and then Dyl’s back. “I gotta go. You’re coming home for Christmas, right?” The only thing Dylan lets himself get excited for anymore: Christmas. So yeah, Dylan, of fucking course Rudy will be there. He’s your fucking reindeer.

      “Would that give you incentive not to die?”

       “I mean, probably.” The murmuring gets more insistent, and Dylan says something low and placating that Rudy can’t quite hear. “See you around, okay?”

      Rudy hangs up without saying goodbye.

 

  The first thing he does is wrench his way out of the car and vomit. He never actually had time to eat this morning, so he just kind of heaves, curling an arm around his middle, and it does nothing for the cold in his stomach, queasy and chemical like he’s just drunk a gallon of pool water. He’s left trembling. God, he needs a cup of coffee.

He’s driving down Main Street towards the only coffee shop he actually knows of when he sees him--motherfucking Teeth, limping down the side of the road like an idiot. He’s doubled over when Rudy drives by him, and without giving it much thought Rudy yanks the wheel and pulls over, tires thumping unsteadily over the grass. Teeth stays hunched over, curled around himself like he’s his own life preserver. Rudy leans over and cranks the window down.

     “Hey, you need a ride?” He has to shout to be heard over the rain, which has gone from a shower to a monsoon. There’s no response, and Teeth’s shoulders are heaving. For a second, Rudy thinks he might be crying, but then he sees Teeth’s sweater-clad hand clasped over his mouth and figures he’s being wracked by those nasty-sounding coughs. He can’t seriously be trying to walk home in this with fucking pneumonia or whatever he has. It takes a second for Rudy to realize that the extra bag Teeth is bogged down with is his own backpack, the one he’d abandoned in art history. For a second, Rudy sees Dylan, and doesn’t that just have him out and around the car in a second.  
    “Hey,” he says again, taking Teeth by the shoulder and slipping off the backpack strap, shouldering it himself. The kid flinches a little. “You’re going to get yourself killed out here. C’mon, let me drive you home? And thanks for grabbing my bag. That was cool of you.”  
     His lips are kind of blue, and he just looks so _dazed_. Rudy takes that as his answer and pulls him towards the car, opens the passenger side door and tucks him in the seat. Slams it shut.

        He coughs. Coughs.  Breathes in gasps between the hacking. And then: “What the fuck is this shit?”

        Rudy slams the driver’s side door shut and cranks up the heater. Just like that. Drowned rat in the rain looking the worst Rudy’s ever seen a human being look and still be conscious to critical asshole. Rudy kind of loves him for it.

      “What is what?”

      “The music, Jesus.”

      “Crystal Castles…?”

     “Please p-put it out of its misery. I’d h-have to smoke, like, three bricks of cocaine to make it bearable.”

    Rudy snorts a little—( _laughter, not cocaine_ says a voice in his head that sounds suspiciously like Dylan). “First of all, you don’t smoke cocaine.” He nudges the heat up a little more; Teeth shivers in his thin gray not-a-sweater.  
    He tilts his head to the side a little. “Theoretically, that strengthens the metaphor. And the point stands.” He leans forward, hand poised to change the station, but then he gets this little furrow between his eyebrows. “Is this a cassette player?”

      “It’s an old car. So are you going to tell me where you live at some point, or…”

      Teeth grimaces a little, and Rudy pretends not to see it. “I’m not headed home, actually.” The word “home” sounds like it leaves a bad taste in his mouth.  The rain isn’t showing any sign of stopping, so Rudy puts the car in drive and cautiously pulls onto the street.

      “Okayyyyy, well, I was on my way to get a coffee. You’re welcome to join me, but I can drive you wherever you’re going?”

      “I was going to the aquarium.” He says it so warmly that Rudy looks over, wondering if maybe this is something crafted from illness-induced delirium, but Teeth just grins at him. “I would, however, be willing to forgo that in favor of drinking some of your conformist go-go juice.”

       It’s just that the last time someone looked at Rudy like that, the next step was taking him up to her bedroom, guiding his hands to go _boldly where no man has gone before_. They had words in high school for the kind of guy Rudy is, but he thinks he’s just easy.

       (It’s just that the last time someone looked at Rudy like that was the first semester of senior year, and it wasn’t just _one_ someone, either, but that someone has never, ever been a boy.)

       (There was another word for that in high school.)

       The weird part of Rudy wants to somehow explain all of this to Teeth; the even weirder part doesn’t want to drop him off at the aquarium, because he doesn’t want him to go.

       So what Rudy does is one-handedly open the armrest, eyes flicking between the slick road and the open compartment, and slip out his shoebox full of cassette tapes.

***

   IT'S NOT LIKE RUDY WAS EXPECTING DIANA TO BE _chipper_ about him bringing home a new friend or whatever the shit you’d call Teeth at this point. What he did not anticipate was this look of panic in her eyes followed by her yanking him into her room, furious and twitchy.

   “Diana…?”

   “What the hell are you doing hanging around my _half-brother_?” She’s whispering, which seems kind of unnecessary since Teeth is in Rudy’s room. He kind of just strolled in without invitation and announced that he was finding some dry clothes to wear. Rudy figures it’s only fair, considering the fact that Teeth’s sweater is still clinging to him like...something really clingy. Has Rudy mentioned that he’s not a poet? Also, you don’t write poetry about boys’ sweaters. So.  
    “What? What are you talking about?”

    “That, my _very_ dumb and _extremely_ slutty friend, is Daniel, my _motherfucking half-brother_. Double major, art history and theology. Minoring in literature. Obsessed with fish and sweaters. Animal captivity activist, specifically fish, because they are not, as he puts it, cuddly or desirable, so someone needs to speak for them. Determined to bring down Sea World.” She pauses. “Also, his father raped my mother.”

    Jesus fucking Christ.

    “Holy shit, Diana. That’s terrible.” She said it so casually, like she might the big reveal of one of her story books that wouldn’t matter much to anyone not reading the story.

    “My mom thought so too. She tried to drown him in the bathtub after I was born, bought her way out of a criminal offense, and her big ugly secret was promptly tossed into foster care. She wore a miniskirt to the trial. The diary is very specific about the miniskirt. So let’s get back to the point, here: why the fuck is Daniel in my house?”

    “He’s in my art history class. He needed a ride…”

    “How long have you even known him? You’re already swapping clothes and it’s been like two hours since you were supposed to get out of that class. Wait--” She tilts her head to the side, critical, and then her eyebrows lift. “What’s wrong?”

    Rudy’s eyes are kind of red, he guesses, and he’s awfully pale. His shoulders slump. “Dylan. He, uh.” Rudy fiddles with the sleeves of...Daniel’s sweater. “There was…”

    “Is he okay?” Anxious. Her hand is on his arm, and now she’s all fucking sympathy and worry wrapped into this tiny girl that smells like chocolate. Dylan is easy to love.

    “Yeah, he’s okay. Just worn down. He said--” Rudy’s voice buckles and he fights that shit back, beats it back down his throat and locks it up where it can’t hurt anyone. “He said he’s going to die. And that it’s okay. That he’s accepted it. I think the...attack scared him. He’s tired.”

     “So are you.” She takes his hand, smoothing out his fingers where his nails have been biting into his palm. Sometimes Rudy thinks Diana likes him more when he’s broken, and he’s not sure how he feels about that. Rudy doesn’t know what to say so he doesn’t say anything.

     “Listen, Rudy, I don’t think you want to hang around with Daniel.”

     “He goes by Teeth.”

     “Do you go by ‘asshole?’ Because his name is not the point here and you’re not listening to me. Daniel--fine, _Teeth_ \--is fucking trouble.”

     Rudy bristles a little bit. “Do you even know him?”

     “Okay, no, but neither do you. Do you know how he got into this school? The same way I did. Except he _blackmailed_ my mother into vouching for him.”

     Diana’s great-great-great something, the illustrious Mr. Delaney, was one of the founders of Enki University. Rudy’s not sure of the mechanics of it, but he knows that Diana is attending the school on a full ride, and that she is well off, to put it mildly. She gave Rudy and Dylan gold Rolexes as stocking stuffers last year. Do what you will with that.

    “You mean he tried to benefit in some way from the woman that almost killed him? How awful.”

    “Rudy, don’t be an idiot, okay?”

    Rudy feels like he should be shocked by the revelation that Diana has a half-brother, or maybe that she should be crying and they should put aside their differences and hug like in the movies, but instead there’s just this. And there’s a cough in the general direction of the doorway, long and painful-sounding and not forced. Teeth.

    “Rudy? I can just--”

    “No, it’s okay.” Something occurs to Rudy. “You didn’t think to mention that my roommate is your _sister_?”

    He’s wearing Rudy’s hoodie, gigantic and mint green with the Chvrches logo on it in cracked lettering from so many washes, and a pair of jeans that hug his legs. They’re too small to be Rudy’s, so he guesses that they’re the ones the last girl he slept with left behind, and that is just. Well.

    “To be fair, I didn’t have much warning.”

    Diana doesn’t look angry, exactly, or sad. She just looks curious, like she’s trying to pick out the features they share. Rudy can’t even fathom what he’d say in this situation, but what Diana says is “Why didn’t you just give him his sweater back and put your own clothes on?”

    Teeth smirks. “You know, Rudy, if you wanted my clothes off, you could have just asked.”

    Rudy refuses to blush. “Yeah, you’re right. The rain. Your pneumonia or whatever the shit. It was all part of an elaborate scheme to get in your pants.”

    “It looks better on you anyway.”

    Diana hangs there like a limb in a sling.

    “Uh, so, Diana,” Rudy coughs, like he’s the one who’s sick. “I was going to go grab a coffee, and Teeth is. Uh. Tagging along.”

    “I’m sure you’re welcome to join us.” The way Teeth says it is almost like a challenge. Everything he says has this playful lilt, but call Rudy crazy, he has trouble playing games when Teeth’s eye is swelling up and every breath rattles and he kind of hunches over like he’s constantly flinching from a blow. He hurts to look at, but Diana isn’t gentle.

    “A few things. I’d rather spare myself from the flirting, and I don’t leave the house. Additionally, your father raped my mother.” It’s the second time she’s said it and she’s no less cavalier.

    “Fair.” They both chuckle. Rudy guesses that’s a joke. It’s weird since Diana seems to think that Teeth is some devil incarnate. Actually, nothing about this is not-weird. This is so fucked up.

     They’re nose-to-nose, is the thing, and Teeth looks so _young_. Diana’s the skinniest person Rudy has ever met, but Teeth challenges that statistic, looking small in Rudy’s sweatshirt, a head shorter than Diana. His hair is a shock of pale blonde, sticking up at all angles, eyes pale blue. There’s the similarity--the eyes. They’re shaped the same, or something. Maybe the nose is at the same angle. Rudy wonders if maybe he’s just spit-balling. He’s met Diana’s mother; she’s like an older, more self-pitying version of Diana. He guesses Teeth takes after his father.

     “So this has been fit for a soap opera,” Teeth says, “but shall we, Rudy?”

     Diana smirks. “Use protection, you two.”

     “I’m not--” Rudy tries.

     “Shut up. You totally are.” She tilts her head in that way that she does. “Think about it.”

      Rudy thinks about it. “I…” He shakes his head. “I’ll see you later.” Teeth scurries out the door in front of him--fucking scurries--and Rudy hears Diana behind him before he shuts the door, all soft and nostalgic.

     “No you won’t.”

***

   TEETH IS A BUNDLE OF ENERGY ACROSS THE TABLE, HANDS WRAPPED around his cup of coffee. He’s yet to take a sip, and Rudy is starting to wonder if he just ordered it for the warmth factor when he tosses back a sip, nose crinkling as the bitterness settles on his tongue.

            “How do you even drink that shit?” Something acrid wells in Rudy’s gut just thinking about it. “You shouldn’t drink tar. It’ll burn a hole in your stomach someday.”

            “I like my coffee like I like my men--pure, dark, and hot.”

            So yeah, Rudy’s fucking Native American, okay, and that’s flirting if he’s ever heard it. “Yours, on the other hand, looks like melted dog shit. Who drinks cold coffee?”

            It’s a really innocent question, and if Rudy was anyone else it wouldn’t burn this hole in him, but he looks down and mumbles “my brother,” because just, his fucking brother, okay? When Dyl was 7 they figured out that he’d shove his chubby fucking face into Rudy’s mugs of coffee and breathe in the steam because it helped loosen the crap in his lungs, but when their mom tried to boil water and put it in bowls it just wasn’t the same. Something about Rudy’s cups of coffee made the fists around his little brother’s bronchial tube loosen, so bingo, motherfuckers, let’s brew our 7-year-old his _own_ cup of coffee, his own _pot_ if it makes that smile stay on his face. The steam kept on working, but when Dylan decided he actually wanted to drink the stuff, he couldn’t stand the taste, so Rudy started pouring it over ice and adding, like, a gallon of creamer, and to this day a cup of iced coffee works better than any nebulizer at easing Dyl back into the whole ‘breathing like a normal human’ game, iced coffee and shoulder punches and games of tic-tac-toe in crayon on the backs of hospital charts. So.

            Teeth is peering at him curiously. “I keep hearing about him.”

            “Yeah.”

            He doesn’t push, but his curiosity is there. Rudy sees an opportunity.

            “I’ll tell you all about my tragic backstory in exchange for yours.” He pauses, carefully. “Are you okay? Like....” He doesn’t know how to do this tactfully. “Are you safe?”  
             Teeth scoffs like someone who doesn’t know how to scoff, this weird scraping noise in the back of his throat. “Yeah, I’m _safe_.” Pause. “They can never hold me. I’m too quick.”

            When Rudy doesn’t say anything, he gives this grin that hurts to look at, and Jesus _Christ_ his teeth. This kid’s clearly never seen braces in his life.

            “So. Your brother.”  
            “To be honest, Teeth, it’s gonna take something stronger than coffee to make me talk about him.” Cystic fibrosis is like this secret card that Rudy holds close to his chest, ha fucking ha no pun intended.  
            “Not even a name?”  
            “Nah.” Rudy’s just fucking with him.  
            “You’re an asshole.”  
            “I keep telling people that I’m not. I’m the opposite of an asshole. A mouth hole.”  
            “What does that even _mean_?”  
            Rudy hides his smile behind his cup of coffee. He shouldn’t be smiling. His brother’s in the hospital. That thought only tips his lips down at the corners, and he’s not sure how to feel about that.  
             “You’re so annoying.” Teeth pouts and plays with his coffee stirrer.

            “We could play 20 questions. A soul-searching confession for a soul-searching confession. And then we can braid each other’s hair and talk about boys.”

            Teeth coughs into his fist. Rudy idly wonders if he’s on any antibiotic or something for that cough. It sounds like it hurts. When he’s finished, he croaks out, “You first.”

            Rudy wasn’t serious, but okay, cool, he can get behind this, he guesses. “Uh…” There’s so much he wants to know, but he doesn’t know what kinds of questions are allowed. “What’s your--”

            “If you ask me what my favorite color is, I swear to God I’ll punch you in the fucking face.”

            Rudy quickly changes the question. “--reason for limping?”

            Teeth grins with those scary goddamn teeth. “Oh, that’s easy. I don’t have legs.”

            Rudy snorts. “Cute.”

            “I mean, kind of. Legs are two thirds of the body, so I’m kind of just like a baby and it surprises people when I cuss. Legless sailor baby.”

            “I’m pretty sure you have legs, Teeth.”  
            A sigh. Teeth rolls his eyes like this is all terribly inconvenient and reaches under the table, his white-blonde hair all that’s visible for a second, sticking up in every direction. There’s a series of hollow thunking sounds, and then.

            Holy shit.  
            Teeth doesn’t have legs.  
           

           Well. He has the one. As for the other, Teeth props it up on the table, standing it so that it looks like it could just walk off at any second. Rudy’s kind of mesmerized by it; it's flesh-colored, but it's been painted over with acrylics to look like scales. They’re terribly rendered, and Rudy has this inexplicable urge to fix them, mix water with acrylics until he gets the perfect shades of green and blue-gray and turns this leg into art. It already kind of is, Rudy guesses.

            “It’s all very exciting, I know. Don’t faint like the last person. I still haven’t had the free time to write my hit tragicomedy _Me and My Stump_ to ease you through it.”

            “You--”

            “Don’t have legs, yeah. You’ll need to accept this.”

            “You’re kind of fascinating, is what I was going to say.”  
             “I know. It’s a problem.”

"And don't be so dramatic. You have the one."

            Looking at Teeth like this, listening to how cavalier he is, Rudy can see how this is Diana’s brother, all wit and devil-may-care, but the thing about Diana is that she sometimes cries on Tuesdays and when she makes jokes it sounds like her voice is breaking and she doesn’t like to eat very much. She is not as apathetic as she wishes she was or as brave as her book characters are and she is painfully more human than she’ll ever let on. Legs or not, Rudy kind of sees that in Teeth.  
            “My turn.” He slurps at the dregs of his coffee, wiggles his fingers, and doesn’t put his leg back on. Rudy wonders if it’s more comfortable to leave it off. “What is the food you’ll eat when you won’t eat anything else?”

            “That’s a weird question.”  
            “Like _‘what is your reason for limping’_ is the epitome of analytical reasoning? How’s your high horse doing, buddy?”  

“I don’t think that’s what analytical reasoning is.”  
             “You’re so annoying! Answer my question!”

“Grilled cheese and chicken soup.”  
“Laaaaaame.”

“Yeah? What about you, asshole?”

“Sushi. Avocado cucumber roll. Suck it.”

“I think you chew it, actually.”

“Fuck you!”

They go on like this for a while, long enough for the lighting to go all dusky and the rain to stop. The ice in Rudy’s coffee has melted and the proverbial ice around he and Teeth is sizably dented. He now knows that Teeth is lactose intolerant, an eczema sufferer (Rudy _: God, you have like every nerd problem imaginable;_ Teeth _: your face is a nerd problem oooohhhhhh_ ), that he used to have long hair before ‘they’ chopped it off, and that he’s nonbinary (Rudy _: you’re what?;_ Teeth _: I don’t identify with any gender;_ Rudy _: so like a god?;_ Teeth _: I like this analogy_ ) but doesn’t care about pronouns (Rudy: _what do you mean, pronouns?_ ; Teeth: _a lot of nonbinary people prefer to be referred to as ‘they’ instead of ‘he or she.’ You’ll need to accept this_ ). Teeth did ultimately get Dylan’s name out of Rudy, along with “he’s sick” as explanation for why Rudy always looks “like he got hit by a bus” about him; he also gleaned the fact that Rudy likes to draw (as answer to the question 'do you do anything besides stare out rainy windows and feel sorry for yourself?'). At that, Teeth’s eyes lit up.  
            “What?” Rudy asked, ducking his head, blushing a little.  
            “You should draw the ocean sometime.”

Most people ask for pictures of themselves or this character from whatever show or, in Dylan’s case, four consecutive sketches of the red Power Ranger, yeah, fuck that kid.

There was a moment of awkward eye contact.  
            Now, Teeth is rocking in his seat. He doesn’t like to stay still for very long, Rudy’s noticed.  
             “Does this mean we’re friends?” he asks, pushing his hair out of his eyes. The fact that it was cut by “them”--Rudy still hasn’t been able to suss out who “they” are, but deduces that “they” are the person (or people? oh God) who beat up on Teeth all the time--is actually conceivable, the way the layers are all uneven and it’s always flopping into his eyes.  
            “I dunno. It means something. The only friends I’ve ever had are Diana and Dylan.”

“Lots of Ds.”  
            “Yeah. Hey, speaking of those, are you after mine?”

“I’m still deciding.”  
             Rudy smiles down at his coffee cup. It kind of frays around the edges as his phone buzzes again. Diana’s been texting him for the last half hour.

_Does this mean I’m on my own for dinner? We appear to only have various cheese in the fridge._

_Update: what I thought was cheese was yogurt at some point. You disgust me._

_Hello?_

_God, what is this, a smutty fanfiction? You literally hadn’t talked to him before today._

_If you fuck my brother, I’ll probably never forgive you._

_RUDY_

           And the latest one:

            _I’m going to bed. I’ll be here if you need something._

            Rudy feels bad, but the larger part of him doesn’t. Diana will pout for a while, but she will be fine.

            “If we’re friends now, I’m going to show you something even more exciting than my lack of limbs. Speaking of which, could you hand me my leg?”

            “Sure.” It’s very cold.  
            Some hollow thunks. His head pops back up over the table.  
            “So I was going to take you to the aquarium, but it’s closed now, leaving me bound to show you an even greater secret.”

            “Oh?”

            “You’ll have to drive.” He stands up. Winces. Is wracked by coughs. He’s been doing that periodically, the coughing. It doesn’t sound like it hurts any less. If Rudy ever gets back the Chvrches hoodie, he’ll have to wash it in lye or something.

            “Noted.” Rudy grabs their cups to throw away, and by the time he does as much Teeth is skittering out the door. He stops and waits until Rudy crosses the threshold, something odd crossing his face.

            “...Teeth?”  
            A gasp. He grabs Rudy’s arm.

            “What’s wrong?” Rudy wonders if he’s going to faint or something. He thinks of Dylan. “Teeth?”

            “Rudy!” He pauses to cough, clenching Rudy’s arm. “I...I can’t feel my leg!”

            Rudy shoves him off. “You _ass_!”

            “Literally and figuratively. My ass is, like, half my body.” Rudy feels like he should be morally opposed to these jokes that Teeth keeps making, but he guesses if anyone’s allowed to make them, it’s him. “Come on.”

            He lets Teeth pull him along. He chatters at a mile a minute, playing with the sleeves of his sweater and whining about Rudy’s music. Rudy thinks about the sweaters, tugs at the collar of the one he himself is wearing. Thinks about how Teeth wore them even at the beginning of the term, when Rudy was sweating through his short sleeves. He looks at Teeth’s black eye and wonders.

**__________________________**

          SO THEY'VE BEEN WALKING FOR A STEADY 20 MINUTES AND RUDY IS STARTING TO WORRY THAT TEETH IS some kind of murderer or fetishist, luring him to an icy death in the ocean (in Maine) (in winter). He refused to tell Rudy where they were going, shouting directions with very short notice ("Left at the orgy of multiethnic Santa lawn ornaments! Hang a right at the yard that looks like a cemetery!") and instructing him to park at the boardwalk.

       "You realize the boardwalk is closed?" Rudy asked, sliding the key from the ignition.

           "Yeah, that'd be a concern if we were actually going to the boardwalk. C'mon." And then he was out of the car, limping as though his life depended on it.

           The beach is a relatively small spit of land, and usually in the summer there are coast guards warding people off because the cliffs make everyone so accident prone. It's not like a normal beach; a rocky cliff stretches all the way down with periodic rocky formations that stretch into the water, and below them is the stretch of sand, beyond that the brackish water.

            And they're here, walking parallel to the ocean, the boardwalk a smudge of brown and faded carousel colors far behind them. Rudy kind of worries; it's not raining anymore, but it's still freezing, damp enough that Rudy's sweater--well, Teeth's sweater, actually--clings to him. Their breaths, in tandem from the exertion of picking their way over the cliffs, send out little puffs of what looks like smoke, and it makes Rudy want a cigarette, which is just the most fucked up thing. He does his best to lock that thought up in the Dylan-box, which hovers somewhere beside dead relatives and high school sexual conquests in the back of his mind, but it's hard when Teeth keeps coughing like he's dying.

     They must have walked more than a mile by now, and Teeth is all clammy, his legs starting to shake from exertion.

     “If I’d known it was this far, I could’ve dropped you off closer to wherever.”

     “Don’t be stupid.” Teeth’s face is set in a mask of determination, like he’s done this many times before. They’re coming up on a little cluster of weathered buildings, seafood restaurants closed for the season and a few gift shops, mom and pop businesses unaffiliated with the boardwalk. There is one that Teeth is marching towards with a simple sign declaring it The Cave.

     “You know how to handle yourself, yeah?”

     It’s a weird thing to ask, Rudy thinks, and he’s getting steadily more apprehensive.

     “Uh. I’d say so, yeah.”  
     “Don’t take anything you’re offered. If they ask you about bands, nod like you know what they’re saying. Stick close by.”

     “Teeth, what the f—“

     “You’ll see.” He’s smiling. “It isn’t much, but. This is my home.”

     While Rudy watches, unsure of what to say to that, Teeth limps over to the dumpster and pulls a plastic  orange bucket from behind it. He clutches the dumpster for balance and mounts the bucket like a step stool, and, in a feat Rudy wouldn't think him capable of, leaps up and grabs the fire escape. It comes down with a series of clangs and groans, and Teeth makes a wobbly landing. 

     "You in?" Teeth asks, panting a little from the exertion. "You're kind of moving all over the place." 

     "Shivering, Teeth. It's called shivering." 

     "Whatever. Are you going to sit here and shiver or are you coming with me?"

      Rudy finds himself nodding. "I'm coming." 

     Teeth winks. "Not yet. Maybe later." Christ. 

     "Anyway," Teeth continues brusquely, "I think you look hip enough to get left alone. Let's van moose." 

    "What."

     "Van moose. I think it's Spanish." 

     "...vamoose?"

    "You're so fucking annoying."  

    With that, Teeth begins the climb up the fire escape, and Rudy is a fucking idiot, so he finds himself following. (Not before glancing down at himself. _Hip_. He's wearing those earrings that make it look like he has stretched lobes. Whatever.)

     

     Rudy tumbles into the window that the fire escape leads to after Teeth and is immediately on guard. The room smells musty and damp, and it appears to be lined with newspapers. 

     "Where the--"

     "Shhh!" Teeth hisses frantically, and once he has Rudy's attention, gestures around them. Nestled among the newspapers are...holy fuck, fucking _people_ , sprawled in positions that vary only in degrees of discomfort inevitably proctored from them. Very slowly, Rudy glances down towards his foot, where a girl with white-blonde hair's head lolls. Her pink mouth is in an o, her sharp blue eyes clouded, pupils blown. 

     Rudy takes it down to a whisper. "Teeth. Are we in a fucking drug den." 

    "Shut up!" Teeth takes Rudy by the elbow and drags him out. 

     They spill into a hallway with tacky carpeting, and somewhere, music plays, one of those scratchy hipster ballads played on out-of-tune guitars. The walls are papered with comic books and autographed dollar bills, which Rudy can only distinguish when the gently pulsing lights change from red to blue as they sweep over the walls. The damp smell is replaced by potpourri and something resembling chamomile, with maybe the faintest hints of weed. It's quite dark, and Teeth's sweater still clinging to Rudy's slightly damp frame glows in the blacklight. Other things glow in the blacklight, too, smudges on the carpet that Rudy prefers not to think about. 

     "What is this place?" he asks, even though he knows that Teeth is tired of his questions. 

     "Home," he replies enigmatically, his blue eyes glittering. He's practically vibrating with excitement, his illness tamped down for the moment like tobacco stuffed into a gun barrel. 

     (See, this is why Rudy doesn't do metaphors. He tries, and random shit from when his grandfather tried to teach him to shoot a million years ago surfaces. What the fuck ever.) 

    "And home is...?" 

    "Not a drug den. Come on." 

    And he's being pulled along again. 

    "We call it The Cave," Teeth begins as he jerks Rudy around a corner. They pass a bathroom that seems to be decked out in pastel pinks and blues, something out of a surreal 50s film, and there is framed art on the walls that Rudy places as Salvador Dali only after that one with the melting clocks is briefly illuminated in blue light as he walks past. "And yeah, that one room is a drug den, but most of us come for ambiance, not cocaine." 

    "Most?"

    "You were there when we picked over the druggies, yeah?" 

    "Um." 

   "Those are the outliers. The rest--" They've reached a banister, and Teeth points over it to the cluster of people below "--I don't know. I only found this place because they held a poetry slam a few years ago. And they like to take in strays. Which brings me to..."

   He jerks Rudy away from the banister to pull him up a flight of stairs, releasing his elbow only when the staircase becomes too narrow for them to make it up while linked together. With a flourish, he flings open a door at the top of the stairs. "Mi casa. I told you I know Spanish." 

   The room has a slanted ceiling, so attic, Rudy notes uselessly, and the walls are thin, a chill sweeping through them with every gust of the wind outside. A mattress is shoved into the corner, a pile of pillows and a thick blanket folded neatly at the foot of it, and glow in the dark stars dot the ceiling above it. Most of all, Rudy is overwhelmed by the newspaper clippings pasted on the walls. He draws close to one, reading silently. 

   "Sea World?" he asks. 

   "It's sort of my mission. I'm going to shut it down one day." 

   "I...okay?" Rudy spins in a slow circle. The room is filled with books, piled in random corners. There isn't even a desk. 

    Teeth is so proud, but it's the saddest thing he's ever seen. 

    "Anyway, only a few people stay here full time like me. We're pretty close." Teeth's voice seems kind of strained. "Most famously, some band stays here. Fitz and the Whatevers." 

    " _Tantrums_?" Rudy's salivating a little. 

     Teeth actually huffs a laugh at that. "No. The band name is literally Fitz and the Whatevers. I think they were high when they came up with it. People usually are in here." 

    "But not you?"  

    "But not me." He clears his throat and leans against one of the thin, groaning walls, absently rubbing his thigh. Rudy wonders if the leg aches. It must. "This may or may not have been an elaborate attempt to get a ride home..." 

    "You could've just asked. And you think _I'm_ the asshole!" 

    "Yeah, uh, speaking of that." Teeth reaches up to stretch, revealing a stripe of very pale skin. "I may have had ulterior motives. On top of those ulterior motives. I'm an ulterior motive theorists." 

    "You're such a weirdo." 

    "A kind of fantastic one, though." Teeth grins, and fuck, honestly. His hair is all mussed and it's kind of adorable and just fuck, alright? 

    "Uh." Rudy clamps down on his bottom lip. "I gotta. Use the bathroom." 

    Teeth's face falls, just a little. "You saw where it was, right? I'm gonna sit down and, uh. Take off my leg." 

    Rudy's lips twitch. "You're like a LEGO."

    "Fuck off!" 

 

     The little 50s-ish bathroom kind of gives Rudy the creeps, but he sinks down on the toilet lid anyway, running his hands through his hair and generally being a nervous wreck. He tugs at his earlobes, presses the backs of his hands to his cheeks. In the mirror, he's all flushed and nervous looking, pupils almost as blown as the girl he saw who was literally on cocaine. So. Well. 

     He gives himself ten minutes. It's not that he's having a gay panic or whatever the fuck, it's just, well. What is Teeth playing at here?

     It's just that Rudy hasn't gotten along with someone this well since diapers, and he likes it. And he doesn't want to lose it. He doesn't want to just fuck and then leave the next morning. Although the first half of that. Well. _Well_. 

     He flushes the toilet for no reason and gets the hell out before he can think about that further. Crossing bridges when he comes to them, etc. 

 

    He's halfway up the stairs when he hears it, a series of thuds and a low murmur, a hoarse shriek that claws at Rudy's insides. He's up the stairs and bursting through the door before he has to listen to it anymore. 

    A kid in a Shore State hoodie and no shoes has Teeth pinned (sans leg, and that alone has Rudy furious) pinned to the wall, a fist grinding into his shoulder. Teeth lets out a low whine. He doesn't see Rudy. 

   "Like that, pretty boy?" the kid leers, and delivers a swift punch to Teeth's cheekbone. "You're so pretty. God, I could just eat you up." And with that, he's leaning in and kissing roughly. Teeth's fly is down, and there are claw marks on that stripe of exposed skin between the waistband of his jeans (Rudy's jeans) and his sweatshirt (Rudy's sweatshirt). 

    Rudy doesn't really remember rushing forward, but suddenly he's got two fistfuls of sweatshirt and Teeth is crashing to the floor and the kid is staggering and shocked and _take it easy, bro_ , and Rudy is about three seconds from pushing him down the stairs but then "Rudy, don't!" and it's Teeth who's scooted over and is pushing himself up desperately on his good leg trying to worm his way in between Rudy and this _asshole_ and his eyes are swollen and red and there's blood on his face and Rudy needs an explanation right the fuck now, alright? 

   "Rudy, don't. He's--" Teeth stops, swallows convulsively, slumps to the floor. 

   "His boyfriend," the boy finishes, spitting, and that's enough to make Rudy drop his hands. 

   "What the fuck a--" 

   "Don't worry," the boy continues. "We have an arrangement." He leers at Rudy, and Rudy balls his hands into fists. "An _open_ relationship. Isn't it, Daniel?" 

   Teeth is cringing. He looks so small, sitting on the floor between them. 

  He reaches down to muss Teeth's hair. There's no fire in Teeth now. He won't look at Rudy. "Enjoy your fuck. At the end of the day, he'll come back to me." Grin. "He always does." 

    He steps around Rudy and shuts the door behind him. "Use protection!" comes, slightly muffled, through the door. Teeth makes a small noise in the back of his throat and starts pulling himself across the floor. 

    "Teeth--" 

    "Don't, alright?" He pulls himself to his mattress and starts massaging his thigh, wincing as his scowl pulls at his now-bruised cheekbone. A round of coughs starts up, and once they start they don't stop. Rudy crosses the room, slowly, and sinks down to sit criss cross applesauce on the cold floor. He shivers before he can stop it. 

     There's a beat of silence when the coughs stop. 

    "Are you going to let me look at where you're hurt?"

    "No." 

    "Oh. Okay." 

   They don't talk for a while. Finally, Teeth stops massaging his leg, which Rudy hopes means the ache isn't too bad. 

   "It's going to rain," Teeth sighs. "That's what he...came up here to tell me. The storm is supposed to be bad. You might want to get home before--" 

   The skies open, and all at once a torrential downpour is beating on the roof, the sound enormous in Teeth's small quarters. A leak starts immediately in the center of the room. A bucket sits there that Rudy didn't notice at first, planted on a thin layer of newspapers. 

    It's no wonder Teeth is so sick. 

    They listen to it for a minute, Teeth's chest catching every few minutes with either suppressed misery or coughs, maybe both. Probably both. 

    "You're going to need to sleep here, I guess." 

    "Yeah, I guess." 

    "Only the one bed." 

    Rudy thinks of his earlier speculation and feels a little sick. 

    "Don't worry. I'm not going to fuck you." 

    Rudy coughs out a laugh that's three-fourths forced and a quarter obligation. "Shame."

    "Haha. Yeah." 

 

    Rudy guesses he doesn't need to tell you how the next half hour or so passes, lamely delivered jokes masking other things as the rain obstinately refuses to let up and Teeth's face begins to swell. It sort of pales in comparison to what comes after, anyway. 

    Teeth scoots over. "Well. I guess I'm going to sleep now. You're welcome to bunk with the druggies if you want your masculinity to remain in tact." 

    Rudy snorts. "Thanks." He doesn't move to bunk with the druggies, but he doesn't move towards the mattress either. 

    There's another one of those lulls, and the darkness makes Rudy brave. 

    "Hey, Teeth...you said. When I asked if you were...safe, or whatever, you said 'them.' You said you were too quick for them. That they could never hold you." 

    For just a second, Teeth rolls over. He stares at his glow-in-the-dark stars for a moment. 

    "Not Eric," he says quietly after a long time. "I'm not too quick for Eric." 

    And then he rolls back over. 

    Rudy lets out a long, slow breath, and then before he can psych himself out he stands up, stretches out his creaking joints, and moves to the corner to take off his shoes and maybe his jacket. He'll leave them in the corner in the hopes that maybe they won't get completely drenched. He'll have to shoot off a quick text to Diana. 

   He freezes with his phone in his hand. It's been on silent, he realizes. He forgot, and he has about fifty missed texts and tweets and shit. A cold sweat breaks out, and he forces it down. No need to get all emotional over fucking invites to play beer pong or whatever. He stays calm as he scrolls through. He stays calm as he checks his voicemail. 

    "Red," someone says, voice cracking. Dylan. "It's me. And it's, uh. It's dad." 

    He stays calm as he listens to the rest of the voicemail. He stays very calm as he drops his phone. 

    "Rudy?"

    He doesn't answer.

    "What, is there a spider or something?"

    Rudy chuckles a little. Ha. Ha. And then he leans over and vomits. 

    "Jesu--what the--Rudy, what the fuck is wrong?" Teeth is scrambling out of the sheets and out of his mountain of pillows and Rudy is struck with the absurd need to laugh. 

    It feels like seconds, but it's longer than that. It must be. Teeth doesn't have a leg. 

    "Are you sick? I told you not to take anything you were off--" 

    Rudy shakes his head. He barks out a few ccoughs, and then a laugh. 

    "It's my dad." Ha. He points to his phone. The screen seems to be shattered. 

    Teeth goes a little paler. "What...what about your dad?"

    "He's dead." 

    And then Rudy laughs. He's on the ground, strangely. When did that happen? 

   "Oh, fuck. Oh, Rudy--" 

   His face is in Teeth's collarbone. 

   "Fuck, Rudy, it's okay it's okay it's alright--" 

   The ocean tosses in his eardrums, and pieces of it spill down his cheeks, and he’s screaming into Teeth's neck, the neck of this boy he didn't even fucking know until today, quiet but violent, screaming for rough hands helping him learn to ride a fucking bike and clapping onto his shoulders when he's helped Dylan through a rough night and working three fucking jobs and softly playing Beatles songs on his old ukulele when Dylan is sick and once when Rudy had the flu and couldn't stop vomiting he broke out the ukulele for him too and it's raining outside like a fucking hurricane and Rudy is _screaming_ because it doesn't make any _sense_ and maybe that sounds a little bit like the ocean, too.


	2. Chapter 2

 

So the story goes like this:

     Rudy’s father is ( _was_ ) one of those dads that cries ( _cried_ ) over lifetime movies and turns ( _turned_ , fuck) easy games of Ping Pong in the backyard to _Ping Pong Tournaments of the World_ and split peanut butter sandwiches and planned all these fishing trips that never happened. An emotional guy pretending to be something else. He had these traditional views, too, _we have to protect your mother, Rudy,_ but fuck if protecting her didn’t feel like Rudy’s duty, and fuck if he didn’t kind of love it. Fuck if he didn’t feel like some kind of knight. In his father’s mind, he was the hunter-gatherer. He stopped short of spearing the heads of the family’s enemies ( _what on earth, dad, we don’t have ‘family enemies’_ ) on pikes for the world to see, but that was him: textbook father, hell of a guy.

   Rudy remembers their last exchange. He tripped over this old multicolored xylophone from Dyl’s old-multicolored-xylophone-playing days on his way out, and turned to snort in his dad’s general direction.

   “Why do we even still have this thing? It’s a biohazard.”

   “I’m pretty sure it needs blood to be a biohazard,” his father said in this amused tone, not looking up from the papers spread across the kitchen table. “Trust me. I’m a doctor.”

   And he was. Dr. Clearwater, PhD, licensed psychologist but world’s most emotionally constipated father.

   And then Rudy huffed a laugh and he had already kissed his mother and Dylan goodbye so he was gone.

***

  

   See, what Rudy doesn’t know when he _wakes up tangled on Teeth’s mattress with his face pressed into Teeth’s collarbone_ is that his father’s death went a little something like this:

Storm coming. Hunter-gatherer get car, hunter-gatherer keep car from getting destroyed by a falling tree or whatever the fuck, hunter-gatherer go outside to park car in garage. Hunter-gatherer no know about aneurysm. Hunter-gatherer dead before he hits the ground.

   What he does know is that his father is dead, so maybe he doesn’t care that he’s curled around Teeth in the most homoerotic way possible. He stirs a little and groans. His eyes ache. He tries to pull away from Teeth, but it’s so fucking cold and he gives up, his chest hitching a little when he tries to take a deep breath. He wonders if he’s going to catch whatever Teeth has. (He wonders if this is how Dylan always feels.)

“Rudy?” Teeth asks, softly. Rudy’s at the perfect vantage point to hear the junky sound his chest makes whenever he breathes, this kid, and all at once he remembers Eric or whatever the asshole’s name is. He sits up quickly.

“Shit, your face.” Rudy’s voice sounds wrecked, but he thumbs over Teeth’s cheek, wincing at the puffy, purpling skin there. “I’m going to _kill_ —“

   “Shut up,” Teeth mumbles, and rolls over to press his face sleepily into the pillow.

     “Did you sleep at all?” Rudy feels a surge of remorse. He doesn’t really remember much except a shattered phone screen and sobs ripping through him like tiny tropical storms. “Did I…I didn’t do anything, did I?”

     Rudy has this long and well-established history of fucking his problems away. He doesn’t need to talk about it.

     “Yeah, I slept, but it’s like 6 in the goddamn morning, so shut the fuck up.”

     Rudy slowly lies back down, his back pressed into the wall. He shivers.

     “And no, you didn’t do anything.” Teeth turns to look at Rudy, his eyes bleary and pathetic in contrast to the bruising. “You cried for a while and I just kind of held you, I guess, and then I managed to get you over to the bed and you fell asleep.” Pause. “I’m sorry about your dad.”

     “I’m sorry about your shitty boyfriend.”

     Teeth glances down, and Rudy lets out a shaky sigh before he scoots closer to the asshole. Teeth presses his toes into Rudy’s leg. They’re freezing.

     “Handsy.”

     “I’m cold. You’re warm,” Teeth mumbles.

     What he wants to say is that he’s actually freezing in this sort of way that makes his stomach feel full of cement, but his face twists into a grin and he says “I’m willing to accept hot as a synonym.”

     “Are you actually flirting right now?”

     “No…”

     It goes on for a while, this banter, and a few tears leak from the corners of Rudy’s eyes that he ignores, and against all odds he goes back to sleep.

     There are things he needs to do, but not yet.

 

     It goes like this.

     Rudy flies to Texas and the funeral is a dead grey thing, and the minister feeds them typical _ashes to ashes, dust to dust_ shit. Dylan cries, snuffling messily into the lapels of Rudy’s one and only suit, and his mother stands with her hand on Dylan’s shoulder, made of iron and salt and things that are cold. She doesn’t weep.

     After, they go to lunch at some barbecue place (that’s Texas for you, Rudy guesses) and Dylan very obviously doesn’t eat, instead coughing shit up and turning very white. Rudy worries.

     He has to leave the next day—he can’t miss too much school, can’t flunk, can’t lose his scholarship—and Dylan clings to him.

     “I might not ever see you again,” he mumbles. He’s shaking.

     “Hey, hey, buddy, what the fuck? C’mere.” Rudy crushes him to his chest. “You’re okay.”

     “Dad is dead,” he says, and sounds so small.

     “I know.”

     “I miss him.”

     “Me too.”

     “You smell like a trucker.”   

     Rudy pauses and then pushes him away. “Dick.”

     “Language,” their mom halfheartedly admonishes, but she’s smiling softly.

     Rudy leans in close. Dylan still smells like orange juice and dust from all the time he spends neck-deep in puzzles and Sherlock Holmes books. When he was a kid (a smaller kid than the kid he _currently_ is, Jesus) he was obsessed with television, cared about it more than anything. And then he found books.

     “Listen,” Rudy says, quiet. “I don’t want to hear your death talk anymore, okay? You’re alive and you’re going to stay that way.”

     “Dad—“

     “Is a different case entirely. Okay?”

     He’s going to miss his plane if he doesn’t go soon.

     “I love you, you fucking idiot.”

     “Love you too.” It’s what you say, but he’s made the kid smile, so whatever, it’s a win.

     Today it’s a win.

    

     And then it goes like this.  
     Rudy knows a thing or two about epidemics, yeah, thanks pre-med. An epidemic is widespread, and it happens over a specific period of time. That is what Teeth is. Teeth is the flu or MRSA or the motherfucking plague, stealing into his immune system and...shit, swelling up his lymph nodes? Rudy still isn’t a poet. He guesses it’s only to be expected after they essentially (though unwillingly) traded soul-searching confessions within hours of introducing themselves, but he and Teeth become nearly inseparable, walking to Rudy’s car from art history and heading to the coffee shop until Rudy has to dash off to epidemiology, Teeth to Africana studies. They talk theology, by which Rudy means Teeth talks and he listens and enthusiastically nods where appropriate, and they talk music. Sometimes they even talk about Dylan.

“He likes old music,” Rudy says one day, when he can see the curiosity all over Teeth’s face. Rudy’s been periodically glancing down at his crotch where his phone rests, grinning, because Dylan keeps texting him these really obscure things:

**ALL I WANNA SAY IS THAT THEY DON’T REALLY CARE ABOUT US**

**i rly want juice**

**REDDDDD BRING ME JUICEEEEEE**

**mom brought me juice**

**OOGA CHAKA OOGA CHAKA OOGA OOGA OOGA CHAKA…………...H00K3D 0N 4 F33L1NG**

“I don’t really know where he got it from. He basically seduced his preschool teacher by singing a truly touching rendition of ‘Wild Thing.’ Ever since then it’s been all 70s all the time. He sends me mixtapes every once in a while.” What he doesn’t say is that Dylan shouldn’t have even had the _air_ to sing back in preschool. His brother is a fucking hero.

     “He sounds like a fun guy. Fungiiiiiii.” Teeth is sort of high on Nyquil, which he insists on taking instead of Dayquil for reasons he won’t explain. Rudy can’t find it within himself to argue in earnest. The cold medicine makes him hilarious. His sweater is ridiculous today, bright yellow with a globe rendered in neon colors, “Be the change you want to see in the world” scrawled around it in, like, fifty different languages, his hair sticking up at obscene angles, bright spots high on his cheekbones where he’s flushed from the cold.

Rudy has learned things. For instance, Teeth is fucking disgusting. He has this habit of chewing on his fingers and he’s always bitching about his hair and he’s left-handed, which Rudy only knows because Teeth is ridiculously, inexplicably obsessed with thumb-wrestling, and he really is hell-bent on closing down Sea World one day. He’s obsessed with saving this breed of fish specific to Enki, Maine, named Enki, as it happens. He has all these pictures on his phone of the silvery fuckers, drawn to the surface of the water by tufts of seaweed in Teeth’s open palms. He just has this thing for fish.

Thanksgiving passed without ceremony--neither Teeth nor Rudy went home, and they plus Diana sat in the living room with cartons of Chinese food, surrounded by “autumn wonderland” candles because all of them were too lazy to decorate, a Charlie Brown special playing on the crappy cable TV. Diana hasn’t quite accepted Teeth, but she’s accepted that _Rudy_ has accepted him, and all things considered, Rudy will take it. Now, winter has officially wrapped its icy fists around Enki, and snow dusts the streets. It’s all very idyllic.

     And they just exist like this. What exactly it is is one of the few things they don’t talk about--that and Teeth’s home life. The bruises have stopped showing up as much, but part of Rudy thinks that Teeth has just gotten better at hiding them, or maybe Eric has. It makes Rudy want to punch things.

     Here is the thing: Rudy has never had such an easy friendship, and he doesn’t trust it.

     Today when they part ways Rudy is just kind of groaning his way through the snow in his sad little car, empty without Teeth in it. He doesn’t know how he never noticed before, how glaring the absence of someone in the passenger seat pulls at him. He pushes up the knob on the radio--St. Vincent crackles through them, voice distorted a little by the cassette tape--and drums his fingers on the steering wheel.

     He never paid that much attention to how he looked before, mostly because he had no reason to, but now he’s come to appreciate the way his dark skin stretches across his face. The shag of dark hair, the dark eyes. This is mostly because of the contrast it provides with pale skin and white-blonde hair and eyes in shades of blue that change with the weather, but what the hell ever, okay, fuck off, it’s just because it’s fun to draw.

     So whatever. Maybe Rudy’s gay. Maybe Rudy’s gay for Teeth.

     Maybe Rudy falls in love with amputee fishboys instead of girls.

     He pulls into his parking space, the snow pushed to the parking block thing--what are those even called? Teeth would know--snags his backpack from the backseat, and realizes belatedly that it’s Teeth’s, meaning Teeth has his. Okay. Well.

     He’s going to be late to class. Rudy shrugs on his jacket and runs.

 

Epidemiology is theoretically one of Rudy’s favorite classes, he guesses. If he wasn’t dragging his feet about this whole ditch dreams, become doctor, achieve success business, he might even find it interesting. It’s laid out strangely, more like a high school biology class than a college course in epidemiology. The class size is ludicrously small, enabling them to do things such as this--today they’re at the lab, and Rudy’s been paired with the two dudes he sits between alphabetically on the role call, Li Chen, a Chinese exchange student with a nose sharp enough that it would be easy to draw, and Emmett Claybourne, a muscly guy with a thick Southern drawl. At the front of the room, the professor clears her throat.

“Today,” she announces without preamble, “We will be performing dissections. You will move from the smallest organism to the largest——frog, fish, fetal pig, and cat. Some died of natural causes, some not, and some never lived at all. Your job is to decide which are which. Attempt to diagnose those few that died of unnatural causes. Leave the others be.” A strange, small smile graces her lips. “If you begin feel faint, do step out. And then perhaps don’t come back in.” She clears her throat, gives a stiff, short bow, and gestures for the class to begin.

Rudy hears some faint titters as the class dissolves into chatter, vague imitations of the professor’s voice. That’s all Rudy can refer to her as, _the professor_ , even though she’s asked them to call her by her first name, Fiona. The woman attracts teasing, dressing almost exclusively in skirts that go well past her ankles, her hair wound into greying braids that brush the middle of her back, a variety of bracelets jangling on her thin wrists and a tattoo of some kind of sea monster that snakes up her forearm. She’s Native American, and maybe that’s why Rudy feels some kind of strange kinship with her. He bristles a little every time someone makes fun of the stack of tarot cards on her desk or the scent of incense that clings to her.

     “Can’t believe we’re dissecting a cat,” Emmett mutters, toying with his pair of latex gloves.

     “It’s good practice,” Li shoots back. “But I can’t for the life of me understand why we’re dissecting fish. Hardly relevant to _human_ medicine.”

He already has a scalpel in hand, something hungry in his eyes that makes Rudy a little sick. See, the thing is, that fish has silvery scales and is absurdly rotund. Rudy’s seen enough pictures on Teeth’s camera phone to know what that means.

They’re halfway through and Rudy jerks the scalpel a little too harshly into the belly of the pig, getting it caught in some solid thing. Someone at the next table over is fucking around with their already-dissected fish, making its empty husk swim towards the girl next to him and letting out cold, barking laughs. Their laughter is like a steel trap.

“Easy,” the professor mumbles. She’s at Rudy’s elbow and he didn’t notice. “Try this way.” She gently takes the scalpel and makes a neat, surgical cut without even trying. “Remember this: the ghost is with you. Dissecting the body doesn’t mean we respect the spirit any less.” She gives him a soft smile and moves on to scold the table that’s playing with the fish.

“God, she’s crazy,” Li says when she goes, and Rudy’s eyes flick upward.

“Fuck off, you know? She’s our professor. That’s something.”

“Professor slash fortune teller? I can’t buy it.”

“Is there some objection you have to the coexistence of religion and science?” God, he’s starting to sound like Teeth.

“I’m a Christian,” Emmett mumbles, and then, as Rudy wipes some clotted blood from the scalpel, “I think I need to lie down.”

“Go ahead,” Li says. Drawable nose or no, Rudy decides he doesn’t like him.

Aside from Emmett listing to the side at one point, on the precipice of fainting until Li gives him a few gentle slaps on the cheeks and less-gentle jeers at his manhood, the rest of the class passes without incident. Rudy can’t help it——he puts maybe a little too much into determining the cause of death of the fish, expanding Li’s broad diagnosis of _death by_ _toxicity_ to death by toxicity, likely brought on by a particular species of algae. He almost ventures so far as to try and diagnose the particular species of algae, but Li is starting to look at him strangely. Fiona releases them five minutes early, and it’s all fine until he feels a tug at his back just as he’s striding briskly past the quad. God, it’s cold.

“This isn’t yours, is it?” The guy snaps Rudy’s backpack strap, and he abruptly remembers his unintentional backpack swap with Teeth.

“Um.”

“It belongs to that _faggot_. You know how I know?”

Rudy doesn’t need the guy to spell it out for him. Teeth’s backpack is decked out in scales drawn in silver sharpie. He’s pretty infamous around Enki U, but honestly, Rudy thought this shit had died out in high school. He elects to ignore the guy.

“I’m _talking_ to you!”

Rudy goes down hard, and he nearly bites through is tongue. There’s blood in his mouth and grit in his eyes.

“What the f—“

He’s being punched across the face. Once. Twice. He sees stars.

“You trying to get in his pants?” The guy leers. He looks like someone else. “Don’t you know he’s _taken_?”

The guy gives Rudy a swift kick in the ribs, and then he seems to be done. “Stay away from my brother’s piece of ass. I’m sure you can find your own. You’ve got what they call blowjob lips.”

And Rudy is alone.

He lies their gasping for a moment, and it just doesn’t make sense, is the thing. It’s like when Dylan would curl his lips in distaste and click thumbs down on YouTube videos. Rudy just doesn’t understand the point of it. What can Teeth have possibly done to make them all hate him so much?

Eric. Eric’s brother. How many more?

Rudy picks himself up, cradling his ribs briefly. He’s just winded, he thinks, and he swallows a mouthful of blood. This, he knows, is a taste of what Teeth gets on what seems like a fairly regular basis. He contemplates telling someone, but this isn’t high school, and who the fuck could he tell, anyway?

He doesn’t have art history again until Friday. Rudy thinks he’ll take the day off tomorrow.

 

When he gets home, Diana fusses over him, pressing a wet washcloth to his face. She doesn’t ask him what happened, for which he is grateful. Her long red hair is loose today, ticking his cheek every once in a while when she leans in to dab at the cuts on his face.

“You know they won’t stop, right?” she asks quietly when she’s done, twisting the washcloth in her small hands. She takes a very small breath. “This is what being friends with Daniel does.”

“His name is Teeth.” Rudy’s head is pounding, and his eyes are sore. He has a few unread texts from Teeth. That’s another thing——he texts constantly, this kid, and they have never once been normal messages. It reminds Rudy of Dylan’s younger years, when chubby toddler Dyl was fucking preoccupied with octopi and bodily fluids. Teeth’s octopi are a million and one encounters with Enki. Teeth’s bodily fluids are creepy sentiments. _Today one swam into my palm and just let me hold him. Just for a second, I picked him up and held him to my cheek. It was almost like having a little brother!_ And like, God, Teeth, you’re breaking Rudy’s heart here, you weird fucking thing.

“They’re not going to _stop_ ,” Diana says again. She sounds a little angry. She reminds Rudy of his mom when she uses that tone. They have the same name, Diana and Rudy’s mother. Diana and Diana. God, he’s sentimental tonight. “They’re not going to stop until you’re bruised all over like him.”

“I really don’t think that’s true.” He’s not lying. It was the sheer absurdity of it today that kept him from fighting back. That’s all. He’ll be ready if (when) it happens again.

“Then you’re an idiot.” And then of all things she _smiles_ at him, tugging off her fake glasses. They don’t even have lenses. Rudy doesn’t try to argue with her. She’s not wrong.

“You’re never home anymore,” she says then, very small, and Rudy doesn’t know what he hates more, the fact that she’s shrinking herself for him or the fact that he’s letting her. He doesn’t know what he’s trying to say— _sorry, I prefer the company of your half-brother, the child of the man who raped your mother—_ but then it doesn’t matter because she’s kissing him. It’s warm and soft and tastes like chocolate, and yeah, okay, this isn’t the first time, but it is the first time in a while. And Rudy kisses back. And he feels his phone buzzing in his pocket. And he doesn’t think of Teeth.

 

     Christmas steals over the campus like some kind of serial killer, and Diana is disturbingly chipper. She’s always having Rudy make runs to the grocery store for cookie ingredients, which would be funny if it wasn’t so disturbing. Rudy can’t eat another cookie. He’s seriously contemplating becoming a vegan (which has nothing to do with Teeth and his fucking fish, thanks fuck you).

     When Teeth saw the bruises on Rudy’s face, he _knew_ , and he didn’t react with extravagant hand motions that Rudy was expecting. He gave a sad little smile. His sweater was navy blue and dotted with pasty yellow stars.

     “They got to you, huh?”  
     “Um.”  
     “Where else did they hurt you?”  
     There was a moment of eye contact, Teeth’s eyes more clear than they’d been in forever, and Rudy broke it off. “He just kicked my ribs a little. That and the face. That’s, um, it.”

     “It’s because you had my backpack, isn’t it.”

     It wasn’t a question, so Rudy didn’t answer it.

     Teeth’s grin widened with those fucking hideous pearly whites.  
     “Uh…yeah, Teeth, it’s just a bit creepy now.”  
     “It would be bad if I was enjoying this a little, right?”

     That’s how Rudy knew things were relatively okay. He pushed Teeth a little. “You’re the worst thing that ever happened to me, asshole.”  
     “Right back at you!”

 

     They’re officially on Christmas vacation and Rudy promised Dylan that he would come home, but then he gets a phone call that they are off on a fucking Disney cruise, Dylan and his mother, fuck them very much. Dylan is all enthusiasm, jabbering into the phone a million miles a minute about _the pool decks, Red, the fucking pool decks_ because he can’t get in the water which is the saddest thing in the world and when Rudy gets a word in edgewise it’s to ask Dylan to put their mom on the line and she’s making these sighing noises into the phone.

     “Mom?”  
     “It’s his Make-A-Wish trip, Rudy.”

     Shit if that doesn’t just take the breath from his lungs, which is _so fucking ironic_ that he wants to laugh. Or hurl.

     And like, okay. Give the kid a cruise. Give the kid a thousand cruises, because he deserves ever single one. But not because he’s dying. Because Rudy’s not sure his heart can take that.

     He’s not even sure he wants it to.

 

     So. Rather than watching Charlie Brown specials with a sleepy 9-year-old crammed under his chin, Rudy is in the drivers’ seat with a sleepy, bitchy motherfucker crammed into the crook of his right arm, fiddling with the radio and generally making a nuisance of himself. They’re fresh from one of Diana’s cooking expeditions—all nonperishables, thrown into some of Teeth’s eco-warrior reusable grocery bags—and Teeth has never seen Harry Potter which is a fucking tragedy. They’re going to get Chinese food, and then they’re settling in for one hell of a movie marathon, and if anyone asks Teeth is staying with Rudy because of the snow.

 

It’s Christmas Eve.

 

They end up eating in the restaurant because they’re both too starving to wait. Teeth is really fucking disgusting when he eats noodle dishes, mostly because he’s incapable of using chopsticks but _always uses chopsticks_. He slurps like something from _The Lady and the Tramp._

“How have you even made it this far without seeing Harry Potter?”

“How have you made it this far not knowing that fish have livers?”

“Why the _fuck_ would I know that fish have livers?”  
     “Cod liver oil, come on. This isn’t that hard.”

“It’s not like it’s something I needed to know in order to function!”

“And what, the whatevers flying around on their whatevers was so helpful?”

Rudy smiles into his lo mein, but frowns when he bites down on something hard. It’s a bone, he realizes when he pulls it out of his mouth. He just sort of looks at it.

“You know,” Teeth says, an overflowing fountain of useless knowledge, “in ancient China, they used oracle bones to tell the future. They’d carve questions into tortoiseshells and the bones of their ancestors. Then they’d toss them in kilns and heat them up until they cracked. Those cracks were the answers.”

Rudy turns the tiny chicken bone over in his hand. Vaguely, he thinks of Dylan. Sometimes he thinks that’s all he does——thinks vaguely of Dylan and buys Teeth food. There’s a tiny divot in the bone where Rudy bit down on it.

“So what does this crack tell you?”

Teeth gives the world’s smallest smile. “I dunno, Rudy.” Takes a deep breath with those lungs. “I don’t have all the answers.”

 

It happens like this.

It’s only 11 but they’re sleepy and just halfway through _The Prisoner of Azkaban._ Teeth’s complete lack of understanding of personal space has him wormed against Rudy’s side, and Diana sits at Rudy’s feet. He’s very warm and generally satisfied with this state of affairs. He can jive with this.

Oh. _Oh._

See, it hits him like that sometimes. _We can jive with this_ , his dad says as his lips curl into a tiny frown at a bad grade or a scraped knee or a scorched bag of popcorn. _This is fine._

“What’s the matter with you?” Teeth mumbles, eyes drooping. He wore a record-breaking _three_ sweaters today in defiance of the cold, and his cheeks are flushed. Rudy guesses his face is pinched into a grimace. Teeth, the weird motherfucker, touches the creases on Rudy’s forehead.

“Just thinking about my dad. Usual reflective Christmas bullshit.”

Teeth’s face changes into something sad. He yawns.

And then he leans forward and kisses Rudy.

Just like that. Different than Diana, salt and earth rather than chocolate and sandalwood, things that are honest. Short and close-mouthed and unbearably sweet.

“Merry Christmas, Rudy.” His eyes slip closed and he tucks himself against Rudy’s collarbone.

Diana, at Rudy’s feet, is giving Rudy this heartbroken look, and like, fuck, Diana, you can’t text Rudy and kiss him when you feel like it and pretend it means something. Rudy does his best to look confused, but he’s blushing, and the frown lines on his face have smoothed out.

Very quietly, Diana gets up and slips into her bedroom.

Well then.

Rudy can jive with this.

    

     The next day, he wakes up with the flu.

     Teeth is nowhere to be found, Diana either, and he feels like he’s burning, his throat raw enough that it’s hard to breathe. His stomach is churning, and he groans, curling in on himself, trembling. His neck and shirt are damp.

     “Rudy?” It’s Teeth, coming around the other side of the couch with a dripping washcloth in his hands. “Rudy, you’re burning up. I’ve been trying to cool you down—“

     Something is off, here. Rudy feels like nothing is quite real. “Where are we?”  
     “Your house, Rudy. It’s Christmas.”  
     Rudy wants to say something, but bile is climbing up his throat and he clamps his lips together. Everything hurts.

     “You kissed me,” Teeth mumbles, then, and he’s dabbing that stupid washcloth on Rudy’s forehead. It doesn’t help, but Rudy leans into the touch anyway.

     “No,” Rudy tries to reply, his tongue thick in his mouth. “Other way ‘round.” It hurts to speak, so he elects to stop doing it for now.

     “Whatever.” Teeth worries his lip with his teeth and twists his sweater sleeves in his hands. “Rudy, I think you’re really sick. How could you get this sick so fast?”  
     Rudy shakes his head to clear it, keening a little at the ache that blooms behind his eyes. “Where. Where we?”

     Teeth looks so scared, then. Rudy notices a little purpling on Teeth’s forearm.

     “Was…wa’s that? They…hurt you.”

     Teeth shushes him, and then he’s tumbling over some invisible edge.

     He dreams.

 

     He’s in his car with Teeth, who is complaining about the music, unsurprisingly. It’s raining, but the rain is going upside down, and Teeth’s eyes are silver. Rudy knows he should be paying attention to the road, but he can’t tear his eyes away from Teeth, whose sweater looks like it’s made from chains.  
     “Why don’t you ever listen to me? The ghost.”

     “What about the ghost?”  
     “The ghost is with you.”  
     Teeth sounds like Fiona. Fiona with the braids and the tattoos. Then it is Fiona in the passenger seat, and she shouts at Rudy to look out.

     It’s Dylan. Dylan in the road. Rudy jerks the wheel. They plunge over the cliff and into the ocean. Water fills his lungs, and he wakes up screaming into Diana’s shoulder.

    

Rudy doesn’t remember much after that. It’s waves of nausea and headache and desperation. He begins weeping at some point, weeping until he retches, and two sets of hands are on him, one pair stroking through his hair and one pair palming his forehead and supporting his chest. He’s in a bed, he realizes, or maybe on a boat. He can’t seem to see anything properly. His stomach twists and his throat aches.

Once, he jolts awake in a cold bath. He curls in on himself, weeping, and someone with cold hands shushes him gently, cupping water over his head. He’s on fire. He’s burning.

 

Rudy comes out of it 10 pounds lighter. When his eyes crack open and he’s actually aware of it, Teeth is sitting by the bed with a tureen of soup in his hands. He looks gaunt, unhealthy, like the virus has ravaged him too.

“I brought you this,” Teeth says. His voice cracks. “It’ll help you get well.”

“What is it?” Rudy manages, his voice like a ghost.  
     “Enki. It’s like chicken noodle. But with Enki.”

Rudy does a double take, and then he’s wracked by shivers. “Why?”

“It’ll help you get better. Trust me.” Again with that small smile.

“Is it magic soup? Are they magic fucking fish?”  
     “I mean, kind of.” Teeth looks down at the bowl sadly, and Rudy wonders who caught and killed the fish. Who made the soup. “There’s this special sea cave they like to hang out at. It’s like their lair. You can’t tell me these fish aren’t special.”

“Why do you know that? You can’t just hang out in sea caves, Jesus. It’s a miracle you’re not the bedridden one.”

“The fish do it.”

“The fish literally live in water.”

“I think the fish are on to something.”

 

Rudy sits back in bed. The effort of keeping his eyes open is ridiculous, but he only lets himself close them for a minute.

“How long have I been—“

“Four days.” Teeth bites his lip, which is all covered in tiny cuts, like he’s been doing it a lot. “It hit you so fast, Rudy. Diana and I formed an unlikely alliance just to keep you cooled down. We decided that if your fever went any higher than 103 we’d take you to the hospital.”

Something lodges itself in Rudy’s throat. “Dylan?”

“Is fine. Diana’s been keeping tabs.”

Rudy blinks. “Won’t you catch what I have?”

“I don’t really care, Rudy. Come on, eat this. You’re doing that shaky thing.”  
     “Shivering. It’s a simple concept.”

Teeth cracks a little grin, a hint of his inner smartass peeking through this concerned, adult mask he’s wearing.

“Where’s Diana?”  
     “Okay, how about this. I’ll answer your questions if you try to drink some of this broth.”

Rudy can’t even hold the spoon. Teeth guides it to his lips, and Rudy tries not to stare at his hands.

“Diana’s making herself kind of crazy reading WebMD articles. When you can walk, you should really talk to her.” Pause. “After you shower.”

“Fuck off, I’m bedridden.”

The broth is salty-sweet, and it makes Rudy feel warm. At least, he assumes it’s the soup. He’d like to think he’s not sappy enough to get the warm fuzzies over a fishboy feeding him soup.

“Rudy?”

“Mm,” Rudy says around a mouthful of broth.

“You were…screaming, in your sleep. For your dad. And…for me.”

Rudy licks his lips a little. They’re dry.

“Um. Yeah. I was…I had bad dreams. I was looking for you in some of them.”

“I was lost?”

Rudy thinks of Teeth missing class some days with weak explanations, the bruise-like shadows under his eyes and the way his hands tremble. The way he never texts Rudy at night. The way he disappears on the days that they don’t have class together.

“You’re always lost.”

 

Teeth spends the next week at Rudy’s bedside, pretty much, reading him excerpts from their art history book and interspersing it with his own deranged commentary. Rudy pretends not to notice his absence at night or the way his veins stand out like he’s dying.

If after a few days of Teeth’s soup Rudy is feeling much better, well, that’s just a coincidence. Magic fish aren’t real.

They can’t be.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hey guys!!  
> this part is a little shorter than part I, but I hope you enjoy it all the same.  
> this part served mostly to set up some major plot points (I say that as I know what I'm doing, lol)  
> anyone wanna be my beta?  
> thank you so much for reading xxxx


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rudy is falling.

 

RUDY HAS KNOWN TEETH FOR MONTHS BEFORE he realizes that he barely sleeps.

It happens like this: when his dad dies (and God, if that still doesn't sting, doesn't still wring his belly like a dishrag), Rudy stays up for days, and Teeth is there, texting him constantly, somehow understanding without it being said that Rudy wants to talk about anything but what is happening. And then it's Christmas, it's the days in which Rudy recovers from the flu and stays up all night and sleeps all day and Teeth is texting him at all hours and visiting after classes, and then it's February and Rudy realizes. And he shakes. And he understands.

Maybe it's because everything has been absolute shit lately. Maybe it's because Rudy absolutely, positively cannot bear the thought of it. Rudy ignores it. Rudy smiles at Diana and helps her bake and be generally neurotic and makes fun of Teeth's sweaters and indulges him when he makes fun of Rudy's music. Rudy misses his father and worries about his brother. Rudy, in essence, stagnates.

And then Teeth mentions all casual "oh look I'll be 19 in three days" and, well, they need it. He needs it.

 

It's 3AM on a Friday night, and Rudy is studiously ignoring his phone, which buzzes from desperate partiers and occasionally from Teeth, who Rudy is also ignoring, hoping that it will drive the kid to get some sleep. It doesn't appear to be working. Teeth noticed, eventually, how Rudy's face would grow pale and his hands would shake when his phone buzzed, how frantically he would scan over notifications when he had let them go unread for a time, and taught Rudy how to set custom ringtones. He set one for himself-- _walking on sunshine, see, it's funny because I only have one leg_ \--and for Dylan-- _how am i supposed to breathe with no air,_ _see, that's also funny, I'm so funny, you're so lucky to have me._ "Walking on Sunshine" has played about fifty fucking times in the last hour, so, well. Like Rudy said. Teeth doesn't sleep.

His eyes are starting to burn from the computer screen, and Rudy is grateful to hit print and look away. Teeth is ranting about how he went down to the shoreline to play with those fish of his and there was a group of pot smokers there _defiling my sanctuary, Rudy, they were fucking_ defiling _it_ and Rudy is smiling all soft and it's shit like this, he knows, that confirms just how fucked he is.

He scrolls down to the most recent texts and has to stifle his laughter.

**is that not the most fucking ridiculous thing you've ever heard**

**answer me i know youre awake**

**rudy pay attention to me**

**rudy**

**dorothy and the rudy slippers**

**rudy rose, australian model and genderfluid actress (super hot btw)**

**rudy toot toot**

**rudy im feeling neglected**

**:(**

 

Rudy shoots him a quick text back ( _shut up asshole i'm arranging a kickass birthday gift_ ) and snags the still-warm pages from the printer that sits on the floor under his desk.

It took a sizable chunk of his paycheck, but it sits right with him. Rudy smiles to himself.

And then _holy bleeding fucking Christ on a cracker_ something is beating on his window and Rudy is shrieking and falling sideways and the desk chair is falling on top of him and holy _shit_ , holy fucking _shit_ he's scrambling up and there is laughing and oh my god Teeth is the biggest fucking asshole Rudy has ever put up with.

 

"Hey, Rudy." He doesn't have his fucking leg on, this kid, his chest rising and falling with exertion, grinning up at Rudy. Today's sweater is plain pastel pink with a watermelon slice embroidered on the front pocket, and he has a backpack slung over his shoulder.

"How the _fuck_ did you get in here?" Rudy asks in a whisper-yell, hoping desperately that Diana doesn't come to check on him. After Rudy got sick, Diana's biting remarks slowly softened back to their normal caliber, but her bursting in to find Teeth on Rudy’s bedroom floor doesn’t exactly seem like the best way to get back into her good graces.

 

“I _grappled_.”

“What.”

 

Teeth cocks his head toward the window, and Rudy pauses a moment before his curiosity beats his trepidation and he edges over to the window.

He doesn’t know why these things keep surprising him.

Teeth’s leg is hooked around the gutter, and there is a rope of sweaters tied around it. Teeth _literally motherfucking grappled_ up Rudy’s _house_ , and, well. Rudy stifles his absolutely fucking incredulous laugh and opens the window to retrieve the damn thing, because clearly Teeth isn’t going to do it.  The biting cold hurts his cheeks, and he shudders as he yanks the entire ridiculous contraption through the window.

And of course, Teeth has the papers in his hands, his mouth a perfectly round O of shock. “What the fuck is this? Tickets to fucking--”

“Don’t be an idiot. Read the rest of them, dipshit.” He rubs the back of his neck, self conscious.

 

Here’s the thing. Rudy has this feeling in his chest whenever he looks at Teeth, this oily mess of an emotion. He wants to put his hand on his shoulder or smile, and fuck, sometimes it hurts him, having to pretend Teeth smiling and Teeth laughing and Teeth rambling about art history or the biology of fish isn’t the most beautiful thing he’s ever seen, but when he looks at Teeth he sees his dad and when he says I love you it comes out asshole and that’s just how it fucking is right now, okay, he wishes it was different but he doesn’t know how to make it happen. He doesn’t know how to stop the grief to make room for love.

 

Teeth has rifled through the papers by now (two tickets to Ontario’s Marineland along with some helpfully printed maps), and he’s staring up at Rudy and grinning, this kid. His bruises are fading and he still hasn’t put his leg back on, which fills Rudy with a strange, sick relief. He likes that Teeth isn’t catering to him, like he used to when they would hang out--pop the leg back on to reduce _Rudy’s_ discomfort, of all things. He doesn’t need Teeth to cater to him. The rest of the world does that already.

 

“I--” Rudy is insecure, suddenly, and he rushes to explain himself. “I know it’s not even Sea World but the closest one to us was Ohio and that closed in like 2001 and I know you’ve always wanted to like break in and take it down from the inside or some shit which is ridiculous and I don’t even know if you have a passport I’m sorry it’s stupid--”

 

Teeth scoots over to Rudy and cradles his face in his hands. “Rudy. You absolutely brilliant motherfucker. It’s perfect.”

 

He kisses him, then, this dry, chaste thing, so different from that hungry beast of a kiss on Christmas, and it’s so unbearably sweet. Rudy flushes. When he pulls away, Teeth is smirking.  

 

“And I have my passport.”

 

                                                                                   _____________________________

The drive is eight hours, almost nine, and Teeth is handling it essentially how Rudy expected him to: like a toddler, bouncing restlessly in his seat. Rudy drums his hands nervously on the steering wheel as he drives, almost as restless as Teeth. His mind is screaming him that this is a bad idea, a stupid idea, because what even fucking happens to them if they get incarcerated in Canada? What the fuck are Canadian prisons like? Would they even go to prison? How would he explain any of this to his parents? The way Teeth grins at him periodically, however, melts away the worry, and Rudy pushes aside the thought that he is fucking _whipped_.

 

The plan, which they have discussed at length, involves wasting most of the day. It shouldn’t be too difficult, since Rudy, for one, will be fucking exhausted when they get there, but there is also the fact that Marineland itself is in Niagra Falls. Teeth seems enamored with the idea of seeing the place itself, and Rudy is putting up a convincing front of refusal, but they all know how that’s going to go. They’ll arrive, sleep through the night (if Teeth will fucking let him), and wake up and play tourists until an hour or so before closing, at which point they’re going to enter the park.

 

“Very smart of you, to buy tickets. It’ll be easier to _infiltrate_ them that way,” Teeth had said, poring over the maps Rudy had printed. To his delight, Rudy had also provided pink highlighters, which he had been using generously to map out ‘escape routes.’ Rudy keeps it to himself that he had originally wanted to buy two day passes, because despite the moral ambiguity of marine animals in captivity, it’s all very idyllic--he imagines it like an amusement park. Maybe he’ll be able to win Teeth a stuffed orca or something.

 

(A memory: his father, years ago. A Six Flags trip during a time where Dyl’s lungs were actually cooperating. A carnival game. His father teaching him to angle the ball to knock over the milk bottles to win the bear for his brother, the wind snatching laughter from his throat on the tallest ride in the goddamn park.)

(He stops smiling.)

 

He drives until it feels like there are grains of sand stuck to his eyelids scraping every time he blinks before he pulls off at a rest stop. As it turns out, Teeth has his driver’s license, which is possibly more of a shock to Rudy than the whole leg thing. Rudy insisted on driving the bulk of the journey--it’s been five hours, and Teeth, always one for surprises, napped for most of it--but now Teeth has offered to take over. Rudy supposes it’s not worth the pride of driving the whole time if they die horrifically in a car crash.  

 

“No, fuck that,” Teeth says after they’ve peed and bought sodas and waters and, in Teeth’s case, a gigantic bag of Twizzlers, when Rudy is cozying up to the passenger window. Rudy doesn’t have time to protest before he’s being yanked down, his head on Teeth’s lap. “You need to fucking sleep, Rudy.”

 

He opens his mouth to argue, but Teeth has already started the car and is pulling out of the parking lot. He fights it, he really does, but he drifts off with Teeth’s free hand running through his hair.

 

                                                                                       ______________________________

 When he wakes, it's to Teeth's gentle shaking. They're in a motel parking lot, and he vaguely remembers being woken up an hour or so before to get through the Canadian border. He shivers, chilled; Teeth has his window down, and his eyes are bloodshot. Rudy feels bad, and sits up, rubbing at his own eyes. 

"Hey there."

"Hey yourself," Teeth murmurs, smiling at Rudy in this gentle way. "I can't believe we're here. 

"Me either." 

It occurs to Rudy very suddenly that he will be sharing a bed with Teeth tonight. His cheeks warm. There's a silence and Teeth looks away, unexpectedly awkward in a way that makes Rudy think he's just had the same realization. It's only about 3pm, but the kid looks exhausted. 

"I don't want to sleep," he says suddenly. "It'll make my sleep schedule get all messed up." 

Rudy grins; there's no time difference here, but he'll play along. "Good idea. What do you want to do?" 

There's a beat of silence, and then Teeth is beaming. 

"Let's go to Niagra Falls." 

**

They're walking hand in hand, and Rudy forces himself to be okay with it. It's not that he's in the closet, and he could care less about what any onlookers might say; it's more that publicly showing that he cares about Teeth feels dangerous, feels like showing his hand. 

It's just that they still haven't even discussed what this is. 

But then it doesn't even matter because there it is and Teeth is smiling and laughing with an open mouth and nature screams around them, pours down in torrents and sends a breeze whipping toward them. Teeth drags him to the rail and they look down to a platform populated by people in yellow ponchos. Every now and then, the wind will really kick up, sending down thick foam and water that draws a shriek from the huddle of people. The sun is reflecting off the river, and it feels right. 

"Rudy," Teeth breathes. "Let's go down there."

Rudy's first instinct is to say no, fuck no, it's February and we'll literally freeze to death, but then he thinks of his brother and his father and Teeth's bruises and Teeth's shitty maybe-not-boyfriend and Diana alone at home terrified of everything and he's saying yes before he can stop his lips from forming the word and Teeth is repeating it _yes yes yes yes_ and they're running to the visitor center. He doesn't realize he's breathlessly giggling until he has to choke out _two for the Cave of Winds, please,_ and the cashier gives him a weary smile. 

He tries to pretend Teeth doesn't look fucking adorable in his yellow poncho, but _you're not fooling anyone, asshole._ He realizes he's had hardly any time to think. He kind of likes it. All at once, Teeth is helping him into his poncho and they're on their way, the water drowning out the sound of Rudy's heart in his ears. They're forced to slow down on the slick metal steps that lead to the platform, and his grip tightens on Teeth's hand. He's mindful of the kid's bad leg, knowing that the change in weather has probably made it hurt like a motherfucker, but Teeth is practically vibrating with excitement, and something terrifying and real and guttural is blooming in Rudy, something different than what he felt when he'd ask girls to movies and concerts in high school and not watch them, immediate and overwhelming and unbearably sweet. 

As it turns out, even in February, there's a line, and they idle behind some other yellow ponchos, shivering with both anticipation and cold. Unfortunately, this gives him time to think.

"Dyl would love this," Rudy says without planning to.

Teeth doesn’t say the obvious thing, doesn’t experience his condolences or whatever the hell, and Rudy loves him for it. That doesn’t make it any easier, though, and he forces himself to keep talking around the lump in his throat. 

“My dad--” Fuck. It hurts. It blisters his throat, that’s how much it hurts. “My dad was always the best at making him feel normal, y’know? I can pal around or whatever, be his annoying older brother, but he can tell when I’m worried. He’s not stupid. And my dad--he just. He was so--” 

His voice breaks, and he stops. 

“It’s not fair,” Teeth finishes for him. “It fucking sucks.” 

“It fucking sucks that he’d be all over this shit. He would be rattling off random ass facts about how Niagra was originally formed and its prehistoric purpose or I don’t fucking know, okay, he would just be all over this shit and it’s not fair that his lungs would never in a million years let him come here, and  _ I’m fucking tired of being this big brother to a martyr who serves as a symbol or some shit. _ ” 

It’s that last part that is never, ever supposed to come out. He’s allowed to be sad, allowed to be angry on Dyl’s behalf, but he is never, ever supposed to call him a martyr. Never supposed to show weakness. Rudy is shaking from more than the cold, now, so after a moment he perches on the metal divider that keeps the line organized. Teeth doesn’t say anything, just sort of looks at him with all this softness on his face, and then he climbs up beside him, bad leg stiff, and pillows his head on Rudy’s shoulder. For a moment, all Rudy can hear is Teeth’s breath. He swears it’s louder than nature itself.

And then he speaks. 

“Eric wasn’t always like that.” 

It’s a testing of the waters, an offer of trust in exchange for the honesty Rudy has just shown, but Rudy stiffens a little. After all, if Eric’s word is anything to go by, he is nothing more than a temporary distraction. He thinks of Teeth’s bruises. He thinks of the screaming. He thinks of that pathetic fucking attic bedroom. He thinks of his dad his dad his dad his dad--

“He was sweet, at first.” Teeth is scratching at his own wrist, and Rudy catches the offending hand with his own, stills it. He thinks maybe Teeth’s head is on his shoulder to keep from looking him in the eyes. “I met him at a shitty club and we went on a couple of dates. He asked me to go steady. I’ve always been a sucker for that shit, like, who fucking says that in 20 goddamn 16? I thought it was going to be good.” 

Teeth seems to change course halfway through, decide this isn’t something he wants t talk about--Rudy doesn’t know how he knows, but he does. He can practically feel him fishing for a way out of it. 

“It’s okay,” he says quietly, rubbing his thumb over the back of Teeth’s hand. “I guess we’re both pretty fucked up, huh?” He tries to make a joke of it.

“Yeah, it’s kind of pathetic.” Teeth sighs, and Rudy feels the puff of air on his cheek.

“Shut up, you don’t even know what that word means.” 

Teeth pulls away, looks Rudy in the face. His eyes are cloudy.

“Yeah I do. It’s like the opposite of a fish, right?”

 

Rudy’s heart aches for his magic fucking fishboy. 

 

The line moves, then, and Teeth’s face lights up a little, regains some of its former excitement. “It’s our turn!”

 

And they’re pushing against the other people in line, rushing the platform. They’re coated in mist almost instantly, and Rudy shivers with the chill, but there’s something liberating about it. He turns to say something to Teeth-- _ I love you _ or  _ I’m glad we did this _ or  _ It’s not your fault _ or _ I loveyouIloveyouIlove you-- _ but then the wind is picking up and screams rise up around them. Water from the falls cascades around them, and Teeth grabs Rudy’s hands and grins and Rudy feels it, Rudy feels wind and water and the echoes of the thousands of people who have been here before them, their fear and love and exhilaration, hears Teeth whooping and watches his lips form around the sounds, and all at once he leans forward and presses his lips to Teeth’s. His hair is slicked back with freezing water that belches over the edge of Niagra fucking Falls, his fingernails are turning blue, and he kisses Teeth full on the mouth, their lips slick. It’s tender and exciting and so much at once, and he laughs into Teeth’s mouth, blinks the water off his eyelashes, feels so fucking much. 

When they separate, Teeth’s eyes are shining with more than river water, and Rudy is suddenly insecure. Did he do something wrong? Is it his leg? Is it--

For once, he doesn’t give a single shit what anyone things. “Are you okay?” he yells over the roaring river. No one is paying attention to them. They’re all living their own stories. 

“Yeah, it’s just--” Teeth scrubs at his eyes, presses his lips close to Rudy’s ear. 

“That’s the first time  _ you’ve _  kissed  _ me _ .” 

 

Rudy is suddenly hit by the absurdity of it all, the wonder of it, and he throws back his head and laughs. Teeth laughs with him, and they press themselves to the guard rails, letting the frigid water soak them clean through. Rudy is not thinking of his father or his brother or his shitty medical degree. He thinks of blue eyes. He thinks of cold hands and fading bruises and his stupid fucking fishboy. 

  
He thinks he could stay here forever. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I rly wanted this to be longer but i know you guys are jonesing for an update and i do not have it in me to complete the chapter tonight!! i hope this is a good taste, though <3


End file.
